MINER AND SOLDIER

Tola Dorian and J. Malafayde

Etext by Dagny
This Etext is for private use only. No republication for profit in 
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Morlock, 6006 Greenbelt Rd, #312, Greenbelt, MD 20770, USA or 
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http://www.cadytech.com/dumas/personnage.asp?key=130

                     Translated and adapted by FRANK J. MORLOCK
                     C 2003

RAVEAU: Holy shit! what's the use of us repeating the same thing like this all the time. We are screwed! I'm telling you from one side to the other we have nothing to lose, since we possess nothing, not even an assured existence.

A WOMAN: The scabs will arrive tomorrow.

RAVEAU: Tomorrow? Mustn't dilly dally then; since we have tonight to ourselves, I will answer for it.

JEANNE RAVEAU: Still we must have luck that our son not be among the soldiers of the line but in the rear guard! It would be nice if they sent him to blow us up! Isn't it a shame —now it's our soldiers who are sent against us like Prussians!

SEVERAL VOICES: It's monstrous! It's a curse!

A WOMAN: It's as if our right hand were cutting off our left hand, right, friends?

JEANNE RAVEAU: I call this dogs being trained to hunt dogs. You don't even see animals do that. Come on!

MICHELINE: (running in) News! news!

SEVERAL VOICES: What is wrong?

MICHELINE: A regiment has detrained at the station —The first soldiers are near by. (trumpets are heard) Do you hear them bray?

FAURAIN: I'm rushing there, they will have need of me. The directors are unaware that I am with you: I am going to try to ferret them out.

JEANNE RAVEAU: What regiment is it?

MICHELINE: How do I know? They are line troops.

A MINER: So long as they aren't posted near the pits tonight.

RAVEAU: Go on, go on, make the comrades hurry: enough chattering here like this; everybody go home. Await the signal.

SEVERAL VOICES: What signal?

RAVEAU: You think that when the dams break and the pump explodes, and the steam engines burst under the shock of shafts collapsing down eight hundred meters that the noise won't reach the village? Go, you mustn't believe this will happen silently. Not a shed, not a machine, not even a slag heap will remain standing. The earth will cave in with a thunder that will awaken the directors, I bet. You will hear the furor of Raveau shouted on the plain, I will answer for that. Now, leave, be calm, wait with patience. Let's go, come, Raveau!

(All are go away. Then offstage orders can be heard shouted.)

VOICES: By the right flank, halt! bayonets rest!

(Enter two officers, a director and a foreman.)

RICHARD de BEAUMONT, OFFICER: This is it, I think, my friend. Hmm! You are the equipment master, I think? Your name?

FAURAIN: Etienne Faurain, ———-.

DIRECTOR: He's been one of our best workers. Never has there been the least reproach against him.

DE BEAUMONT: Hmm! Hmm! That's very good, my brave fellow. Ah, yes! All the same, my poor friend this business is placing you in a fine mess. All these scandals. It's amusing. (aside) And for me as well! It's going to be just great. (aloud) Is this here the main pit, Director?

DIRECTOR: Faurain, the captain is asking if this is the main pit. I am little aware of the technical stuff, captain. The rest of us, our business, is rather big sales, exports, the stock exchange.

DE BEAUMONT: Hmm! Well, Faurain, what do you say?

FAURAIN: It's the pit's train car, captain.

DE BEAUMONT: I'm asking you if it is the principal point of extraction, if it's the post that must be most heavily guarded?

FAURAIN: (emotionally) Captain, I think that the Averne pit is more important as to material production. The machines are almost all constructed near there.

DE BEAUMONT: Then one sentinel here, will suffice and the rest of the platoon —at —? What did you call it, Faurain?

FAURAIN: The Averne pit, captain!

DE BEAUMONT: Hmm! Your opinion, Lieutenant?

GUITARRE: My word, Captain, yours!

DE BEAUMONT: And —for tonight, my brave man, do you foresee an alert? You must know the disposition of your men, living together with them? It's quite extraordinary and all to your honor that you do not share their madness. Are you reassured for tonight?

FAURAIN: As for me, Captain, absolutely reassured. The men are all consorting in cabarets. In the village, everybody at this hour is asleep or arguing.

GUITARRE: By Jove! that's where they find their inspiration —in the cabaret, the lazy good for nothings.

DIRECTOR: Allow me, Captain, I am going to send a despatch to the board of directors. Come, Faurain.

DE BEAUMONT: I think that poverty is a secret advisor heard by them, Lieutenant.

GUITARRE: Poverty is a bad advisor, captain, even when it is honest; when it is exaggerated, then it is a social danger.

DE BEAUMONT: Ah! ah! you cannot speak otherwise, lieutenant. Don't you have coal mines in these parts?

GUITARRE No, captain, my mines or rather those of my parents are in Anzin.

DE BEAUMONT: Your parents, formerly workers, I think?

GUITARRE: Not at all, captain. My great grandfather was a machinist, it is true. Retired, he bequeathed my father a share in the company, fruit of his thrift.

DE BEAUMONT: And that share?

GUITARRE: Was five thousand francs.

DE BEAUMONT: Worth today?

GUITARRE: It brings an income of thirty thousand francs.

DE BEAUMONT: What the devil! the company hasn't been ruined since! Now, on what basis has its prosperity accrued? on a system of low wages or augmented production, that's the question?

GUITARRE: Captain, the wages have never changed.

DE BEAUMONT: And the cost of living has tripled, by Jove!

GUITARRE: What I saw of the life of the miners seemed to me far from being harsh. Wages, six francs a month, clean apartments, airy, garden, free coal —doctor and pharmacy, ditto.

DE BEAUMONT: I think that with a family of ten, food is scarce with them. It's true we are in a Republic which rewards —many things.

GUITARRE: You cannot change everything at once, Captain. They have free and obligatory education. They have freedom.

DE BEAUMONT: Great freedom! Ah! but there it is, the red spectre that terrifies our plutocrats! As for me, I don't give a damn! I'm going to post my men where it is necessary, and if the population gives me trouble, I will shut them up —and that's that.

CURTAIN